


Lebkuchen für Kinder

by miyakowasure



Category: Johnny's Entertainment, Sexy Zone
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-03
Updated: 2014-04-03
Packaged: 2018-01-18 02:16:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1411255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miyakowasure/pseuds/miyakowasure
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I don’t usually mind being the youngest in everything, but just sometimes I wish I knew how it feels like to be the oldest of all."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lebkuchen für Kinder

**Author's Note:**

> I know other people who have long before me noticed the usefulness of having "Magical German Cookies Made By Marius’ Grandma" as a background point for fics and ficlets. I decided to join into the club with this one. :'3 Also, as I have screamed in twitter many times already: wtf WHAT HAPPENED? This was meant to be a drabble. It ended up being almost fifty times longer than that. Oops?

\- - -

The grin that spread on Marius’ face when he realized _it actually worked_ was even wider than usually - he couldn’t help it - and it didn’t falter an inch when Sou slowly left his chair, walked around the table and stopped in front of him, crossing his arms on his chest and glaring up at him in a very unimpressed way.

“Explain,” Sou demanded and failed miserably at trying to look convincing. It was difficult to be scary when he was short enough that his nose was hardly at the height where the other boy’s navel probably was. 

“It worked!” Marius cried out, beaming like a small Sun, “You’re younger than me!”

“I can see that,” Sou murmured.

“I can’t believe it,” Marius sighed happily, and suddenly reached over to ruffle Sou’s hair. Sou protested with a loud wail but Marius was too strong and he couldn’t get away before his hair was a big fluffy mess. “Finally I can do that to someone else!”

“You could do that anytime.”

“But it’s not the same!” Marius insisted and sighed. “Although I have to admit my aim was to make myself older, not turn you guys younger. I guess they don’t affect me after all. Grandma warned me about it.”

“Grandma?” Sou quickly caught the point from between the other boy’s lines, “It’s the cookies, isn’t it? The birthday cookies you shared with us. There was something in them!”

“The recipe is an old family secret that has been passed down from grandmothers and mothers to daughters through several generations,” Marius recited, obviously repeating his grandmother’s words rather than coming up with an explanation of his own. “I don’t usually mind being the youngest in everything, but just sometimes I wish I knew how it feels like to be the oldest of all. So I asked her to make and send me some.”

“I will never eat anything you offer me anymore,” Sou chuckled, scrunching his nose even though in fact he was slowly starting to warm up to the possibilities of the spell that had been put on him.

“No, no it’s okay! I can make those cookies too, and mine will be safe to eat. I can’t do the magic part. Only grandma can, and since she doesn’t have any daughters, she will only tell the secret to my sister.”

Sou nodded slowly, and still made a mental note to always think twice before eating anything Marius would offer him. He returned to his side of the table, frowning thoughtfully.

“How long will the magic stay?” he asked and hopped back to his chair.

“One day, maybe two,” Marius said with a shrug. “Probably. She wouldn’t have put anything in them that would make the change very long-lasting.”

Now that he knew everything would be normal soon enough, Sou finally flashed Marius a mischievous smile, wondering how to make the best use of his limited time of being chibi-fied.

“How old do you think you are?” Marius asked curiously and tilted his head, “I’m bad at guessing. I’m used to German children and they always look a bit older than Japanese.”

“Seven,” Sou answered firmly, “I’m seven.”

“How do you know?”

Sou pointed at his school books that were still open in front of him.

“The homework. I can’t read it all, only a few kanji here and there.”

“Oh,” Marius said and his eyes widened. “That’s interesting! I wonder--”

A loud slam by the door drew their attention and when they looked up, Sou could hardly stop the smile that pulled the corners of his mouth when he suddenly understood the appeal of being among the older ones for once. If he was short, Shori was absolutely tiny.

“What happened to me?” Shori yelled and seemed to be half amazed, half scared, and both Marius and Sou laughed at him. “I took a shower and then I dressed up and I was hungry so I ate the cookies you gave me and then POOF!”

“Old German Magic,” Sou said cheerfully, “Don’t worry! It will wear off. Until that, let’s make sure that Marius _-niichan_ learns his lesson!”

“Hey!”

“No complaining, it’s your own fault! Be like an older brother now and offer us a dinner!”

“Who would let a seven-year old and--” Marius started but stopped suddenly with a frown. “Shori? How old are you?”

“I don’t know?” the boy said, tilting his head, “I… I don’t know.”

“Can you write your name?” Sou asked and offered his pencil and notebook to Shori who took the pencil and slowly scribbled a line of shaky hiragana characters to the notebook.

“In kanji?” Sou specified and Shori shook his head.

“Only the first and the last one. The middle ones are difficult…”

“Six years, maybe?” Sou suggested and Shori shrugged.

“I don’t know,” he repeated and then grinned, “But I don’t care. This is fun! Everything looks so big!”

“Wait,” Marius said and seemed slightly alarmed, “If Sou is seven and you’re six… shit!”

Shori slapped his hands on his ears and Sou scowled at the (currently) oldest boy. 

“No bad words when there are small kids in the room! What is it?”

“Big words from such a brat,” Marius huffed, “I just realized… Where’s Fuma? And Kento? _How old are they?_ ”

“Oh,” Sou said and his eyes widened as he suddenly understood the implication. “Shit!”

“You, too!” Shori accused and sighed when it became clear that neither Sou nor Marius was listening to him.

“Where are they?” Sou demanded, “After the dance lesson, where did they go?”

“I don’t know!” Marius snapped, wincing at the thought of two lonely babies crying somewhere in the big building.

“Their Shokura pe- pefromance?” Shori suggested and suddenly he had both Marius and Sou’s full attention - he enjoyed it and smiled eagerly, wishing one of the older boys would praise him a little bit. “They will sing together next month. Maybe they are practicing.”

“Of course!” Sou cried out and jumped down from his chair again, “Great! Let’s go find them!” Marius nodded and, to Shori’s great joy, quickly ruffled his hair a bit before the three of them ran out of the room.

Marius wished they wouldn’t meet anyone by the corridors. He didn’t necessarily desire to explain the situation to anyone.

It took a while as they checked through all the dance rooms, most of which were, luckily, empty. By one of the doors Marius bumped into Yamada, who smiled and greeted him happily.

“Still here, huh? Didn’t your dance lesson end some time ago already?”

“Uh, yeah,” Marius said and flashed a nervous smile back at the man, wincing when Yamada took a better look at Sou and Shori. To his surprise he didn’t need to come up with any explanations for the condition of his bandmates. Yamada only looked genuinely amused when he eyed at the very familiar looking children who stood next to him.

“It’s Chinen,” Yamada explained and laughed at Marius’ confused expression, “One gets used to weird things when working with him as long as I have done.”

“Oh, okay,” Marius said and glanced nervously around, “Look, I need to find Fuma and Kento. Do you know where they are?”

“Upstairs,” Yamada said and nodded towards the staircase that started at the end of the corridor, “I just talked with them half an hour ago.”

“You did? Was there, uh… did you see anything weird?”

“I don’t think so,” Yamada said and raised his eyebrows, “Should I have?”

“Oh, no,” Marius said and bowed a little bit, “excuse me, but I really need to find them right now.”

“Good luck,” Yamada wished and Marius nodded, grabbing the hands of the smaller boys and dragging them towards the staircase.

“Come on!” Sou hissed and pulled his hand free once they got to the stairs, “I’m not a baby. You don’t need to walk me around!”

Shori didn’t say anything but he, in turn, didn’t seem to mind a little help by the stairs.

Once they stood behind the right door and Marius grabbed the doorknob, he stopped for a second, closing his eyes and praying for the best. He had given Kento and Fuma a full bags of cookies. What if the amount of cookies eaten related with the resulting age?

A sharp, piercing scream from the other side of the door interrupted his prayers and he stormed in, Sou and Shori right behind him.

Fuma and Kento were both there, and thankfully they were not babies - not that they were much older than that either. Kento was lying on the floor, crying so loudly that Shori covered his ears again. Fuma had been crouching next to Kento, patting the crying child’s dark head with his small chubby toddler hands, but he jolted onto his feet when he noticed the three older boys enter the room.

“I didn’t do nothing!” Fuma immediately cried out and took several steps back, looking down and pulling his hands behind his back. “I didn’t tell him to jump from table! He jumped himself!”

Marius glanced at the table and the chairs that had clearly been used for climbing, and at Kento who was still crying. With a few strides he got next to Kento and lifted the child up on his arms.

“There, there,” he shushed and pushed Kento’s front hair aside to check if he had really hurt himself. Luckily there was nothing more but a round red spot near his temple; it might develop into a bruise but it was nothing serious, and Marius did his best to get Kento calm down a little bit. When he turned to look at Fuma, the boy was still standing frozen, and Marius could almost imagine the huge cloud of quilt flowing hovering above him.

Marius slowly walked to Fuma and kneeled down in front of him, waiting until the small boy slowly met his eyes.

“Did you tell Kento to jump from the table?”

“I said I didn’t!”

“Fine, I believe you. But did you tell him to climb onto the table?”

Fuma was quiet for a long time before he nodded just a little bit.

“Okay, now. I’m not angry at you, I promise. Will you tell me what happened?” Marius said in a soft voice. He felt sorry for the poor little boy in front of him, but at the same time he couldn’t help being happy and a bit thrilled too. Fuma was always like an older brother to him, taking care of him and spoiling him. For once he, Marius, could pay back even some of the caretaking.

“We were playing,” Fuma murmured, “It’s a mountain and we are exporels!”

“Weren’t you dancing at first?” Sou interjected, and Fuma nodded again.

“We stopped. We… we ated cookies. And then I… I don’t danced anymore. I can’t.”

“You can’t dance?” Marius asked, “Our dances?”

Fuma shook his head and nodded at the same time, his expression full of frustration. Kento had been leaning his head against Marius’ shoulder and listening to their conversation quietly but now he too looked up at him.

“Hey, Mari,” he said and hesitated, “We went small.”

“Yes, you are very small now,” Marius chuckled, unsure if he should tell the boys the reason or not.

“But we’re… big. We are really. Right, Mari?”

“Yes, you are,” Marius sighed and held Kento just a bit tighter in his arms. “Sorry, guys, I… It’s my fault. I just wanted to be a bit older.” Why was it, he wondered, that an idea that had felt so amazing earlier, had proved so stupid and even dangerous. He didn’t even want to think about what might have happened if Fuma and Kento had already left work and eaten their cookies on their ways home. What if these small children had ended up wandering alone in the big, big city of Tokyo?

“It’s okay though,” Sou said and offered him an encouraging smile, “It’s kinda amusing. I’ll forgive you if you take us out to play.”

“To play?” Fuma’s gloomy face suddenly brightened up a bit and he grabbed the oldest boy’s sleeve, “Marius, can we go to playground?”

“To playground, to playground,” Kento and Shori demanded at the same time, and Marius couldn’t help laughing.

“Fine! I will take you guys to the nearest playground!”

How, though? How on earth was he going to get these four kids out of the building so that the whole world wouldn’t get to know? Besides, even if no-one recognized his friends and left them alone, it wouldn’t be easy to travel by train with such small companions.

Suddenly he really wished he had thought about the practical side of the plan a bit more before putting it into action.

“What am I going to do?” he murmured to himself with a deep sigh. At the same moment his phone vibrated in his pocket as a sign of a new message. He fished the phone into his hands, saw the sender of the message, and realized there might be a way to solve his transportation problem.

“I have to admit this is not what I expected to see when asking how it’s going,” Fujigaya said and stared at the four children that sat nicely around the table in the Sexy Zone dressing room. Marius had bribed them to stay still for a moment with small juice cartons and a bar of chocolate.

“Please, senpai,” Marius whined, “I need help! I can’t get them to my home alone and I’m afraid they’ll start running around again once they get the juice and the chocolate finished.”

“Of course I’ll help you,” Fujigaya said with a gentle smile, but he wasn’t looking at Marius. Instead, he crouched next to the table. Surprisingly, Mariuys felt a jolt of jealousy flash through him as he stood behind Fujigaya’s back, watching how the man carefully petted Fuma’s hair. It was surprising and confusing at the same time. No matter how he had especially wished to be older, right at the moment he felt a bit abandoned and kind of wished he was the small one again, so he could have both Fujigaya and Fuma’s attention.

“Hi there little one,” Fujigaya cooed to Fuma, “Shall we go for a drive? Tai-nii will take you!”

“No baby-talk, Fushigaya. I’m big boy. I can drive too,” Fuma murmured through all the chocolate he had stuffed into his mouth and Sou grinned from the other side of the table.

“We look like children but we are not,” he said and leaned against his palm. “We just talk like children. And I think they think a bit like children too. It’s like a gamble, you know, and I was the lucky one!”

“Obviously,” Fujigaya chuckled and looked around, “Well, shall we get going so you'll have time to play before the night!”

It took some time to arrange the children into Fujigaya’s five-seat car in the safest possible way, and in the end Kento and Shori ended up sharing the middle seat in the back of the car. On their way to Marius’ home he told the whole story to Fujigaya who laughed so hard that Marius wasn’t quite sure if he should feel glad or offended.

“Thank you,” Marius sighed and bowed deeply to Fujigaya when all the kids were standing safely by the doorstep of the Yo household and everyone's adult-sized jackets and bags had been piled and hung on his arms and shoulders.

“No problem,” Fujigaya said and his smile was notably similar to the one that Marius had seen on Yamada’s face. “It was nice to be of help. Besides, one could say I got used to things like this years ago.”

“What? You, too?” Marius gasped, lowering his voice in a bit, “What do you mean?”

“Well,” Fuijgaya said and chuckled at his own thoughts, “For almost ten years I’ve been working with a guy who sees things that other people don’t.”

“Tamamori-senpai?”

“So you knew?”

“No, just… intuition.”

“Hit the bull’s eye anyway,” Fujigaya said and shook his head, still smiling. “I guess every group has their resident magical weirdo among the members,” he continued.

Marius wasn’t sure if he wanted to have the reputation of ‘the magical weirdo’ of his own group. Especially when there was nothing magical in himself at all he thought when standing by the doorstep with his tiny bandmates and waving to Fujigaya when the man drove away.

After both Yamada and Fujigaya having taken the whole thing so well, Marius had secretly dared to hope the same would apply for his mother. He soon found out it had been a useless wish from the very beginning.

“Marius!” she cried out as soon as she recognized the four children who stood around him in the hallway, “What did you _do_ to them?”

“Why do you think it was me who did something?” Marius snapped, feeling hurt about being immediately blamed for everything. Never mind it was his fault indeed.

“Grandma’s magic,” she realized even faster than Sou had, “I’ve always said your father and grandmother are being too lax about these things! Just wait until he comes home and we’ll have a good talk. Magic ”

At a sudden loss of words, Marius simply shrugged and looked down. He felt embarrassed for getting scolded in front of his friends like that, and wondered if he’d still dare to ask his mother if the others could stay over for the night.

“We’re sorry to bother you,” Sou suddenly said, and Marius could have hugged him with how thankful he was for someone else dealing with the situation that he couldn’t handle. Even with a face of a seven-year-old Sou was, after all, years older than him.

“Not at all, you boys are always welcome here!” Marius’ mother said and suddenly she had a bright smile on her face as she kneeled to say hi to the smaller kids too.

“They can understand your normal voice too you know,” Marius murmured quietly when he couldn’t listen to all the baby-talk anymore. She only glanced at him without a word but at least she didn’t look angry anymore.

“Have you eaten anything today?” she asked and everyone shook their heads. “Well then, I guess it’s good I didn’t start cooking for the dinner yet.”

“Hey, mum… I kind of promised to take them to the playground. Is it okay if we go now and come back later for the dinner?”

“Of course, just a second,” she said and quickly went to the kitchen, soon coming back with two bright-colored plastic bottles of water. “It’s quite warm out there. Remember to make sure everyone will drink enough!”

The nearby playground was nothing very amazing but it seemed to satisfy the youngest ones’ wishes. In the small area surrounded with a wooden fence there were a few swings, a slide, and a couple different jungle gyms. In the middle of everything there was a sandbox with some well-worn sandbox toys that someone had probably forgotten there. Once everyone was inside the fence, Marius didn’t need to tell the children twice to go ahead and do what they wished. He himself sat into one of the swings and watched everyone playing.

“Is it like you hoped?” Sou asked him after about an hour, when he was swinging in one of the swings and Marius was pushing Shori who sat on another swing.

“Being the oldest one?” Marius asked and thought about it a while, looking at Fuma and Kento who were sitting by the sandbox and happily building a sand castle. “Yes… and no.”

“You wanted to be the oldest like Kento usually is with us?”

“Something like that,” Marius sighed with a grin, “Although this might be even funnier, after all.”

Sou nodded and they were quiet for a while and enjoyed the quiet peace of the late afternoon, the cheerful chatter of the two youngest children being the only source of any noise.

“Do you hate it? Being the youngest one,” Sou asked then and Marius needed another moment to think.

“It’s not that I hate it. It’s just… I don’t even know. Just sometimes I feel like everyone around me is… You’re all so mature, and then there’s me. Sometimes I just feel so _stupid_ in the middle of you all.”

“You are quite a mature guy. I mean, for someone who only turned fourteen lately,” Sou pointed out and smiled a bit. “No-one thinks you’re stupid.”

“Thank you,” Marius said and even though Sou’s words didn’t automatically cure all his problems, at least he felt much better.

“Mari!” Kento suddenly yelled from the sandbox. By then Marius had already come to the conclusion that Kento didn’t know how to pronounce his whole name. It didn’t matter, and he yelled back to ask what was wrong.

“I’m hungry!”

“Fine, fine,” Marius said and let the movement of Shori’s swing slow down until the boy could jump down on his own, “Let’s go and see if the dinner is ready!”

It was, and when Marius’ father came home, the expression on his face was definitely worth seeing as he counted the children sitting around the dinner table and got seven in total.

“Well, it’s been a while since I’ve seen this in my kitchen,” he said and sat on his usual place at the end of the table, looking at Shori who was struggling with his children’s sized chopsticks and Fuma who had abandoned his spoon and happily used his fingers to pick the vegetables from his plate into his mouth. “Ten years or so?”

“Only seven,” Marius’ older sister corrected from the other end of the table where she was patiently helping Kento to eat without messing his clothes, “Remember, Marius was already going to school when he learned to use chopsticks.”

“Shut up, sister!” Marius cried out, feeling how his face turned red in embarrassment, “Of course it took time; it’s not like we used them every day back in Germany!”

“Children, children,” their mother warned, “Too much noise!”

“So what’s with this…” their father started once the table had fallen quiet again. However, he didn’t seem to know how to finish his sentence so he settled for beckoning towards their guests with his hand. Marius glanced at his mother who sighed and put her chopsticks down.

“Your mother,” she said to her husband with a wry smile, “sent your son some sweets. He gave them to his friends.”

“Oh,” Marius’ father said but his tone was mostly amused, “So she still has the skill!”

“Dear!”

“Fine, fine,” he chuckled, “Hey, son. Can we agree you won’t feed your friends with more of Grandma’s bakings? It seems like your mother doesn’t approve of it.”

Marius promised, and the rest of the dinner was spent peacefully, after which the children were sent upstairs to play with a bucket of legos that Marius’ older brother found in his cupboard. Meanwhile, Marius’ mother made him to call all the other boys’ mothers and tell them their sons were staying over the night. To his relief she didn’t demand him to tell the other mothers anything else. Some things were better not spread around the world, she said with a deep resigned sigh.

The sleeping arrangements weren’t as complicated as Marius had feared they would be. His family didn’t have enough spare futons for four people, but they didn’t need them anyway; Kento, Fuma, Shori and Sou fit easily on two futons. It was only nine o’clock but the smallest ones were already yawning widely as soon as they lay their heads on their pillows. Sou insisted he wasn’t sleepy at all but Marius’ mother didn’t listen to any objections. It was bedtime for everyone under twelve, she said and pushed a thick book with distantly familiar covers into Marius’ hands.

“You liked these when you were smaller, remember?” she said with a wistful smile, “Start from the page seventy-three. That one was your favorite. I think they might like it too.”

“But I’ve never read anything aloud to anyone,” Marius tried in vain, leafing through the pages of the book.

“Then it’s a high time to learn how,” she chuckled and turned to look at the four small boys who were already lying under their blankets. “Good night everyone!”

“Good night,” they answered in a cute choir before she closed the door. Marius sat onto his bed and opened the book, but he didn’t even manage to start before Kento pushed his corner of the blanket aside and sat up.

“What is it, Kento?”

“I need to pee,” the little boy stated and Marius rolled his eyes.

“You just did; it’s not even fifteen minutes yet!”

“Toilet!” Kento demanded.

“Fine,” Marius sighed, “go.”

The child didn’t move an inch, and Marius started to get a bit frustrated. He wasn’t used to pampering anyone, let alone his bandmates, and he seriously suspected Kento was being annoying on purpose.

“Shoo,” he said and waved his hand towards the door, “Go quickly or I’ll start the story before you come back!”

“Toilet bowl is too high! Come help me!” Kento whined and looked discontent enough that Marius couldn’t help getting up. He walked Kento to the toiled, helped the boy to sit on the toilet seat, and waited behind the toilet door until he heard the noise of the toiled being flushed.

“Wash your hands!” he reminded through the door. Kento took his time with the washing part, which was supposedly a good thing, Marius thought when they returned to his room.

“Marius,” Shori murmured apologetically and Marius raised his eyebrows. He had thought Shori was asleep already.

“What is it?”

“Can I have some water?”

Shori got his drink and Marius was ready to open the book again. He took a deep breath and was about to start reading when there was some shifting and movement under the blankets, and Fuma crawled out from the foot end of the futon.

“I’ll go to toilet. Not need to help,” he announced and left the room.

“Relax, Mari-chan,” Sou murmured quietly from his place, obviously sensing the deepness of his friend’s frustration, “mum always says that one badly slept night every now and then can’t spoil a child’s upbringing. And they’re not children, anyway.”

It took almost ten more minutes before everyone was back in their beds again.

“Marius,” Fuma said quietly, and Marius was dangerously close to snapping the brat to shut the fuck up already and _listen to the story._

“What is it?”

“Can you read to us here? Then we can see the pictures.”

The shy request was insecure enough that Marius couldn’t help his heart melting at it, and he immediately got up. The children were happy to make room for him in the middle of them, and Marius could finally start reading.

As the story went on, he noticed he did remember the plot and many detail as well. Most importantly, he realized the pictures were more familiar than he had at first thought. In the beginning his reading was a bit disjointed and uncertain, but soon the story took over and he forgot his discomfort and inexperience at reading aloud, putting his soul into the reading like he remembered his mother and father having done so many times years ago, and enjoying the story as much as his young listeners did.

One by one the children around Marius fell asleep. By the end of the third story Marius’ voice was slightly hoarse and he couldn’t help his eyes fluttering as well. He reached for the wire of his bedside lamp with his toes and switched the lamp off, not bothering to get up anymore. The others were small enough that Marius, too, had lots of room even though Shori tended to prefer sleeping like a starfish, and Fuma’s cold toes felt freezing whenever the boy kicked Marius’ thigh or stomach in his sleep.

It wasn't the most comfortable night of his life, but he couldn’t say he minded much. His friends’ sleeping faces were adorable, and it was kind of relaxing to fall asleep when listening to the sound of their slow breaths.

Marius was genuinely relieved when he woke up next morning and found himself squeezed tightly between very grown-up sized Fuma and Shori. Fuma’s brown curly hair was tickling his nose and Shori had thrown his arm across Marius’ chest. Apparently Sou had the habit of stealing other people’s blankets when he slept - he had two and a half of three blankets. Kento had somehow switched places with the others during the night and was now sleeping soundly between Shori and Sou, holding tightly on the last half of a blanket that Sou hadn’t yet taken.

The two futons were definitely too small for five tall, broad-shouldered men but Marius just sighed happily, brushed Fuma’s hair away from his own face and closed his eyes again, planning to snooze for a few more minutes. Being the oldest one had been fun for a while but in the end Marius preferred his own place exactly like his current location was; as the group baby in the middle of awesome friends.

\- - -


End file.
